Not many brides and grooms can boast of an improvised big band session during their wedding day…but Helen & Matt can!

The couple married in enchanting mountain-top village of Ravello, on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, earlier this year and had quite a unique and fun wedding day surprise.

Helen & Matt’s wedding coincided with the beginning of the Ravello Festival, an annual summer festival of music and the arts held in the town. The first festival was held in 1953 and was originally dedicated to the German composer Richard Wagner.

Over the years the festival has grown and developed into an almost two-month long presentation of a wide variety of music featuring large orchestras, chamber groups, jazz, art shows, dance, photographic exhibits, discussion groups and the chance to meet and talk with the featured artists, many of whom are of internationally renowned.

A theme is given to each year’s festival. The year’s festival is based around the theme of ‘Il Domani’ or tomorrow, the sense of the future. And what more appropriate theme to Helen &  Matt who began their future together on a memorable May day with their wedding ceremony at the pretty Ravello town hall then celebrated with their family and friends at the beautiful Liberty-style Villa Eva.

During photos of the bride and groom alone together around Ravello and against some of the town’s lovliest and most suggestive backdrops, a light shower caused the couple to take shelter alongside the members of a brass band who were performing at the Ravello Festival and who decided to serenade the happy couple.

Helen & Matt were delighted to perform an spontaneous first dance for the band and for the enthralled spectators who gathered to enjoy the improvised event!  As Helen says, ‘People actually thought we had paid for the band! Ha ha! We were so so lucky to be in the right place and the right time when they appeared. They are some of my absolute favourite moments of the day as I just couldn’t stop laughing! Especially when Matt insisted we marched around the square with them and danced at the top of the church steps. We caused quite a scene.